we take what we can see— the engines driving us mad, lovers finally hating; this fish in the market staring upward into our minds;

is a highrise apt. next door and he beats her at night and she… and I see her the next day standing in the driveway with curl… and she has her huge buttocks jamm…

I was back in L.A. about a week and a half. It was night. The phone rang. It was Cecelia, she was sobbing. “Hank, Bill is dead. You’re the first one I’ve called.” “I’m so glad you came ...

Back in L.A., there was almost a week of peace. Then the phone rang. It was the owner of a Manhattan Beach nightclub, Marty Seavers. I had read there a couple of times before. The club ...

“your poems about the girls will s… 50 years from now when the girls a… my editor phones me. dear editor: the girls appear to be gone

I used to hold my social security… up in the air, he told me, but I was so small they couldn’t see it,

I am driving down Wilton Avenue when this girl of about 15 dressed in tight blue jeans that grip her behind like two hand… steps out in front of my car

Lydia liked parties. And Harry was a party-giver. So we were on our way to Harry Ascot’s. Harry was the editor of Retort, a little magazine. His wife wore long see-through dresses, show...

in San Francisco the landlady, 80… Victrola up the stairway and I pl… until they beat on the walls. there was a large bucket in the ce… filled with beer and winebottles;

this kid used to teach at Kansas… then they moved him out he went to a bean factory then he and his wife moved to the… she got a job and worked while

they say that nothing is wasted: either that or it all is.

the men phone and ask me that. are you really Charles Bukowski the writer? they ask. I’m a sometimes writer, I say, most often I don’t do anything.

remember, he told me, that when I… years old my mother was always tak… to the doctor and saying, “he hasn… she was always asking me, “have yo… pooped?”

her shoes themselves would light my room like many candles. she walks like all things shining on glass,